I think it's unethical to be a healthcare provider and say "I'll only treat people who can afford to pay out-of-pocket."

I thought the same thing.

Were it me, I would never respond to Zarah. I'd see what a rotten mess she dragged me into and let the friendship die. I would also make sure, if Xena asked for more info, to tell her that I'd told her all I know. I would not get dragged into that mess, either. I would never, ever, ever ever ever speak to, contact, or respond to Yan again. I'm not surprised Xena was skeptical. I'm not surprised Yan acted innocent. I'm not surprised Zarah called you right away. But you have done what you can, and I think it's time to walk away. Good luck.

Yet most if the rest of the developed world has one. Where I lived overseas, doctors were employed by the government and were paid a salary. They didn't have to worry whether, how, or how much they would be paid. They already knew. Here in the states, we used to have government-funded secondary insurance for our kids with chronic health issues. It was awesome. Go see the doctor, the government program paid the bill. With only private insurance now, I'm constantly being hassled about what and how much they will pay, and they're always trying to get out of things they are contractually obligated to pay for. It's awful.

Despite advice to the contrary, we waited until 6th grade to start Latin. I think that is a good age to start it. Kids are (generally) reading fluently and have a basic knowledge of grammar. If your kids are excited, there's probably no reason not to start, but with a few caveats: 1) Unless your kids are grammatical geniuses, there is a limit to what your kids can learn when they are young. You may learn reams of vocabulary, but until your kids understand the parts of speech and how and why you decline a noun and conjugate a verb, you are not learning how to read, write, and use Latin. You're just learning a bunch of vocabulary and English derivatives and maybe some cute little songs. Unless you are satisfied just learning vocab for a number of years, you will quickly hit a place where you can't progress in Latin because your kids don't understand how to use ablatives and imperatives and subjunctives and the like. To me, spending years on vocab would have been spinning wheels for no good reason. YMMV. 2) Your kids may get bored of learning vocab after the novelty wears off. Then you have to decide: push on, because Latin in important to you and your homeschooling, or let it go. It can be hard not to get attached to things we begin studying; the idea of letting them go can be difficult. If you want your kids to Really Learn Latin, including putting in the Hard Work and Time Necessary, it may be better to wait until they are ready for the complex grammar than to start early and tread water for years. You could find yourself in a situation where now your kids are ready to Learn Latin (not just play with it), but now they are bored with Latin and hate doing it. When I was trying to decide what to do with my dd in 2nd grade, I looked at three Latin programs for kids: Song School Latin, Prima Latina, and Latin for Children. SSL looked like a waste of time, for me. All vocab and cutesy songs, no real substance. My dd would have hated it. Prima Latina looked dry as dust and very expensive for the tiny amount of Latin you actually learned. Latin for Children (which I actually own) teaches a lot, but it moves extremely quickly, and I found the order of the topics to be odd. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it until dd could use a real Latin program, not one watered down for kids. I started her in a high school Latin text near the end of sixth grade, and now, in 9th, she's almost read to start Latin III. We've had a great time with Latin, and we have made progress at a decent pace. As I said, YMMV. If you and your kids are excited about learning Latin vocabulary, then give it a shot. Maybe use some of the free online games for Latin before investing in a curriculum, though.

I think it's fine to study whatever topics you want in middle school. I don't think there's any need to focus on one branch of science. We use 8th grade science as prep for high school science in terms of ramping up the note-taking and lab work.

I recommend not worrying about grammar until your child is old enough to begin FLL3. FLL 1 and 2 are boring and, imo, unnecessary. FLL3 starts at the beginning and is fantastic. In hindsight, I would hold off on grammar until my kids were reading fluently (chapter books and the like) and writing well. Anything we did before that was basically wasted time.

In my opinion, your only responsibility is to offer her the truth as you know it. Zarah has told you she is having an affair with Yan. You are reporting to her that Zarah states she is having an affair with Yan. It is not your job to prove that this is happening or fix things for Xena. All you can (and should) do is tell her what you know. Do not offer money, do not try to fix things, do not try to prove your case, and do not try to prove your sincerity. Tell her what you know, say you're sorry, and let her handle things from there.

Good luck, bolt! You're a good friend!

Oh, you mean the ones who couldn't get coverage before the ACA, the same ones the insurance companies promised to cover in their panic to defeat single-payer insurance? There's no problem here. Only greed.

We are using Write Shop. It is teacher intensive and a lot of work, but the payoff has been worth it. My son went, within just a few weeks, from writing with mostly sentences that began with "It has" and "There are" to using a variety of sentence types, more interesting nouns, and more specific verbs. Write Shop I focuses a lot of word choice, discourages the use of "be" words, and explicitly teaches varied sentence openings (such as paired adjectives and participial phrases). I do have to simplify the editing checklist for my son, because it's visually overwhelming, but the repeated practice of skills through the daily Skill Builders, the practice paragraph (done with the parent/teacher), the "sloppy copy" (rough draft), the revision, and (if necessary) the second revision really allows my son put what he learns into practice. The program includes extensive word lists to help students find words to describe their senses or to substitute for boring words, which stretches my son's written vocabulary (which has always been smaller than his spoken vocabulary), and so does the enforced use of a thesaurus. My son didn't like WS at first, but now that he sees how his writing is improving, he tolerates it. ;)

We used Write a Super Sentence and then Paragraph Writing. We never used the Daily Six-Trait Writing ones, but you might look into them. Imo, which is my opinion only, a lot of the "writing curricula," especially the ones aimed at homeschoolers, expect a level of sophistication in writing that many young kids just can't attain. I have found that using workbooks focused on specific skills is more fruitful, at least for my son. My dd is a natural writer and has benefited from more traditional writing programs. Btw, we also used the Writing Skills book mentioned above (we used A and B when my son was 11 and 12; he could not have done them at 8 or 9 or even 10). These books are excellent for learning format but have very little instruction in style. They are effective but very boring. :closedeyes:

Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't choose a "writing program." I would pick up some Evan Moor writing workbooks and work through those. My ds is also a delayed writer. He's 13 now. If I had it to do differently, I would have used something with explicit instruction in writing mechanics (not the "absorb through copywork" method) and something that had predictable, schooly, defined writing prompts to help him build his skills though repetition. I am familiar with a ton of elementary writing programs, and none of them would have worked (or did work) for my son as well as the few Evan Moor workbooks we used. I would have made sure, from the beginning, that my son was composing original sentences, not copying someone else's or simply giving narrations. My son was never able to transfer the skill of oral narration to writing. He just learns/works/thinks differently, and now that we are using a program that has him working through explicit writing steps with direct instruction in building a sentence, his writing has jumped way ahead. My son used to leave out words, leave out verbs, fail to complete thoughts, etc. I had to learn that we needed to work on very simple sentences for a long time for him to grasp the idea of what makes a complete thought/sentence. He has to have a template to work from, and it has to be very explicit. Summarizing and narrating and rewriting other people's sentences/paragraphs did not work for him. You might consider teaching your son to type. My son was very resistant and still only types about half the time, but he commented yesterday that he can now type much of the time without even having to look at the keyboard.

My oldest dd went to school from 7th-12th grades. It was definitely a split in the family. DD was focused on school and peers, while dh and the other kids and I were focused on home and family. In our circumstance, it was not possible to homeschool dd, but it was definitely not ideal to send her to school.

I found out the hard way that even if you are very open about things with your kids, if you think they aren't curious, well, they are. And it's not like they find the equivalent of Dad's Playboy from the 1970's when they start searching. There is some warped, perverted, disgusting, degrading, violent, scary, and horrific stuff on the web, and even though I don't care whether my son sees naked women, I do care if he sees much of what's out there. Knowing about sex is way different from seeing the types of porn that are out there. My advice, based on raising kids older than the OP's and on hearing the stories my friends have told, is better safe than sorry. Everyone likes to think they can trust their kids. But lots of those kids look at wildly inappropriate stuff, anyway.

I live about 40 minutes from where I grew up, but I grew up in the country and now I live in the city. I like it around here. Unlike the OP's experience, people are not homogenous religiously or politically. The city is not huge, so there's not too much traffic or pollution, and it's also an easy drive to hiking and camping and other outdoor activities. We live within 2.5 hours of six larger cities and within 4 hours of three very large cities. Living here is convenient and not expensive. When I was younger I swore I would never live here as an adult. I've lived overseas and in a large east coast city, and here I am back where I started. It's a good place to live.

nm

It would be very helpful if you would sell the TM as a pdf and also as separate manuals for WS1 and WS2.

Just confirming ... you can't teach Write Shop without the student book.

I wouldn't let the cheaters know you told. You never know what the husband might do if he thinks he has time to keep his wife from finding out.

She's going to have to suspect what you're going to say after reading your message.

bolt, I hope that things go as well as could be hoped for for you in this situation. :grouphug:

I would want to know. A choice made in ignorance is not a choice. I cannot choose what is best for me if I don't have all the information.

Be direct, and be brief. Remember that it is not your job to be this woman's counselor or lawyer. Don't allow yourself to become another person's crutch. It's likely the wife has her own support system, and you don't need to feel like you have to be the person who helps her make it through. This bears repeating. Zarah is not your friend. Hopefully you can already see how she dragged you deeper and deeper into something you know isn't right. Don't allow this to continue. Could you, in good conscience, comfort someone who is devastated because her affair ended? And if she's angry with you, don't even stick around to hear her out. She may try to deflect the blame for her actions onto you. You don't need that!!

You no longer look like someone who wants to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. You look like someone who has her own complex motivations, and you look like someone who helped try to save an adulterous relationship. I am sure that you are a very nice person, and we all make mistakes, and even though it is very clear what the right thing to do is in this situation, I can understand how it can be hard to do it. There will be lots of fall-out for everyone involved. But it's not ok to enable their cheating, and with the phone call you stepped firmly into that realm. I encourage you to step back out. Right away. Right now. Yan is not the only person who has to live with himself for the rest of his life. And just to re-iterate: Zarah doesn't care about you. Real friends do not drag their supposed friends into their personal moral morass and then ask for active participation in it.